Here is one quote from the article

“In Denmark, the government has taken the bold step of allowing pupils full access to the internet during their final school year exams.
A total of 14 colleges in Denmark are piloting the new system of exams and all schools in the country have been invited to join the scheme by 2011.”

Doesn’t this make sense? Isn’t this reflective of what we expect our graduate to do? Isn’t this preparing them for the future?

Many, many schools have invest huge amounts of time, effort and money in integrating the use of technology in the classroom. It is clear that this investment is as valuable as teaching students to write was in the pen and papers days of the mid 20th century. Technology should be ubiquitous. Do we say to students you must learn how write with a pen and then give them a crayon in an examination?

Now the technology they are discussing here is so much more than a pen and paper, a mere means of communication. We all know the power of the internet, the facilities inherent in a spreadsheet or a word processor, the tools for communication in an instant, synchronously anywhere anytime.

Here is another quote…

“One of the teachers stands in front of the class and explains the rules. She tells the candidates they can use the internet to answer any of the four questions.
They can access any site they like, even Facebook, but they cannot message each other or email anyone outside the classroom”

In the “real” world beyond the gates of the classroom memorization of all knowledge is not a per-requiste and  what is valued is Information fluency, the ability to:

• identify
• access
• process
• present
• and suitably cite and reference

pertinent and appropriate information. To do this you MUST have a good depth of knowledge. The Danish in this trial have realised that the ability to research and process is key. You can guarantee that the questions asked in the examination will be one requiring higher order thinking skills (See Blooms Digital taxonomy). These questions will not require memorization, definitions or simple regurgitation of facts. Rather these lower order thinking skills will be inherent in the Analysis, Evaluation and Creativity expected in the probing and challenging questions set.

There is also an element of trust, ownership and responsibility too in their approach. “The main precaution is that we trust them. I think the cheat rate is very low because the consequences of cheating are very big.”

In trusting them, our students, it implies you have developed a relationship with them. They are not just number in a class, they are not just contributors to your workload. In trusting them and placing the onus of responsibility on them the students are owners of their learning. (see the digital citizen)

I will watch this process with interest, as for me this approach ticks many of the boxes of 21st century learning and assessment.

There is a sign on a wall of an office near my classroom that says “Presume good intent“. I believe that intention here is good.
As I said in the post I use standards all the time. I am moderator for the International Baccalaureate organisation. I moderate their standards and my moderation is also moderated.

I don’t have a problem with standards if they are used for the improvement of learning. I do have a problem with the baggage that goes with them. I do have a problem with ranking kids, in marking them above or below the norm. I do have a problem with the potential for league tables and ranking teachers. With workloads and teaching to the test.

While I was in the States earlier this year, I saw the impact of national testing. I saw teachers who taught to the test for an entire year. I spoke to teachers who were focusing only on the national tests and forsaking  all other teaching because, quite literally, their jobs depended on it. I spoke to administrators desperate to make a difference but tied to a funding system dependent on students making the national grade.

I don’t want to see teacher teaching to the “test’ oophs standard. I don’t want to see teachers performance in the classroom based on one or two annual events. We all ready see this in secondary schools with national examinations. I want to see flexible, dynamic teaching, with a clear and robust reporting system that helps and supports the learning of our children, rather than ranking or graphing.

I don’t want to lose the teachable moment for the sake of rote learning a book for the national standard.

We are not looking at national testing, we are looking at standards. The intention is a good one. The intention is, in my opinion, to clarify communications with parents and help all 3 sides of the hone-school-student partnership to understand where they are going. However, much that I have heard fails to convince me that this intention will become a reality.  There is too much other stuff blurring the focus and fuzzying the edges.

I hope we don’t see teaching to the test, league tables, performance linked employment, ranking students & classes & teachers & schools.  As Greg said in his blog “I only know of ONE principal who has told their BoT this is going to be great.  And that’s because they see it as a great marketing opportunity and a way to sock it to their neighboring schools.”

I want to see dynamic, exciting, vibrant learning & the child,  school, home partnership enthused with clear communications and the appropriate use of standards.

You never know we might be the first country in the world to get it right!

There is another adage that sadly does spring to mind. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions“.

Educational standards provide a platform for equity, a target to work to and beyond, a framework to scaffold learning from.

I don’t have a problem with reporting either. I believe the relationship between school and home is vital and the reporting system we currently have is the opposite of 21st century educational goals of transparency, timely and appropriate feedback.

I do however, have a number of problems with the potential outcomes of the implementation of national standards.

I am troubled in the first instance that standards of learning are set against age, with the expectation that each child at this age will be measured and judged against these criteria. This fails to take into account that children mature and develop differently. It fails to account for the differences between boys and girls.

I am concerned that whether intended or not, the graphing of the child’s performance against a bench mark criteria of “normal” performance will have children condemned irrespective of their actual learning. For the struggling child who has made huge progress forward, who is striving to reach their potential but falls below the benchmark for their age, they are judged by this standard not by their actual learning. For the unmotivated and unengaged student who scores well above the bench mark will be marked as achieving or succeeding while they are well below their potential. This is not accurate or appropriate feedback.

I am concerned that education will become a competition, with Johnny measured against the illusionary milestone of achievement for cohort.

I am concerned about normal distribution and the bell shaped curve creeping in. A standard does not conform to the bell shaped curve.

I am fearful that the next step we may see is national testing. That the scourge of NCLB may visit us. That we may see education and learning in schools focusing wholly on achieving good scores or standards rather than fostering creativity. This is the sad reality of many schools in America. Where the focus of  a year’s learning is achieving at the national standard at the cost of so many other educational endeavours.

I am worried for those children’s whose talents do not lie in the academic realms of the 3R’s Readin, Riting & rythmatic will be ostracised, marked as failures and not recognised for the talents and diversity they have.

I am frightened that these tests will be used to form a league table measuring schools. In NCLB failure to reach certain levels results in reduced funding, sanctions and in some case closure. The same could happen here with selection of schools based on performance to inaccurate standards tied inaccurately to the perception that a “normal” child can do this by this stage of their school career.

I am concerned that this increased loading on teachers will hamper teaching and learning and make teaching less attractive. That other activities will be sacrificed, that the focus may change from the whole person – well rounded, balanced, inquiring, questioning, curious, imaginative, creative, analytical and evaluative – to a more singular purpose of achieving against the national standard or god forbid mean.

BUT YES I SUPPORT STANDARDS

I want to know that my children have reach this standard or that, not that they are in 95th percentile for the country. I want clear statements that detail what my child can or can’t do – these are standards. I want to know whether they are focused, engaged and motivated or struggling, bored or out of their depth. I want to know the progression of levels that my child’s learning would progress through as they mature as a learner, I need to know where they are in that progression and if they are in need of support and assistance or challenge and extension (or even both).

But I don’t need to know they are at 30% compared to the norm. I don’t want a report that condemns them as poor, below average, an under achiever or dumb.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10604965

The reality of NCLB in schools is completely different and huge.

For students to be able to progress between grades or years they must achieve a mininum level of competency. According to the teachers I spoke to there are students in New York who will be entering the 3rd Grade for the fourth time this year.

The testing regime of NCLB is impacting on teaching and learning. Teachers, out of self defence, are teaching to the test. Teachers are scared to experiment as they are measured against standardised tests. School districts (and not the one I was in) are strictly prescribing what a teacher can teach, and these conform to the standards required for NCLB.

There is a huge industry built around the tests. Companies provide tests, administer them and mark them for huge fees. In some schools students are test on a monthly basis to see there progress towards the standardised tests.

A frequent comment we heard as we spoke about different approaches to taeching and learning with a focus on higher order thinking, student engagement and student ownership of teh learning task and process was – how can I fit this in as well, as I have to reach my benchmarks.

Standardised testing on this scale and with the huge emphasis placed on it is killing creatyivity, stifling imagination and rendering worthless what students are learning. The focus on meeting benchmarks is diverting attention from the real purpose of education – our children.

Placing mandatory standards for progression between grades is condeming the less able; those who do not learn in the prescribed read/write learning style; the kinesthetic learners; those with learning disabilities and too often boys to  failure, humilation and disappointment.And for what? a pass mark in a standardised test?

Source – Scott McLeod – Dangerously irrelevant - http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/

This tools analyses the taxonomic level of the learning activity, task or unit. The process is essentially similar to the Bloom’s Assessment Analysis Tool. This tool allows you to look at a simple overview of the activity or unit and provides a simple perspective on task construction. The optional extension of the tool requires you to enter the estimated time spent on each task element and then to calculate a percentage of total time spent on each taxonomic level.

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/Blooms+activity+analysis+2.pdf

Related Links:

Bloom’s Digital taxonomy – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

Bloom’s and assessment – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+and+Assessment

Bloom’s Analysis Tools – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Analysis+Tools

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy – Rubrics – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Rubrics+-+Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

I have revised the tool and included an instruction sheet for the analysis. The tool is prepared under the creative commons share and share-alike licience. Here is the pdf file of the assessment sheet.

blooms-and-assessment-21 (PDF)

As usual comments and suggestions are appreciated.

This tool is an attempt to analyse the structure of examinations and tests and look at the balance between higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and lower order thinking skills (LOTS). Many examinations have a large influence on lower order thinking skills like remembering and understanding and a low emphasis on higher order thinking processes of analysis, evaluation and creativity.

The process in using this tool is as follows;

• work through the questions and add the mark value for each question to the appropriate column
• total each column and then total the mark value in each category (Taxonomic level)
• Calculate the percentage of the test which is based at each taxonomic level.

I don’t believe there are no right or wrong values or weightings. However, we know that higher order thinking skills and processes are preferable to lower order thinking skills like fact recall or simple repetition of definitions.

Here is the assessment analysis tool as a pdf – blooms-and-assessment

I would appreciate comments and feedback.

Today we had a presentation looking at Formative assessment (more on this) but one of the aspects of this presentation that I liked was a model for feedback. The model is ranked from weak feedback to strong feedback and the students will get the most benefit from strong feedback as part of their formative assessments.

Here is the model (Nyquist 2003)

What I like about this is its straight forward, simple and quite common sense (though the use of abbreviations does give it a superficial feeling of complexity).

1. The weakest form of feedback is just knowledge of their results, where our students are told this is your marks.
2. The next level is where not only do they get the results but also the correct answers. This could be analogous to handing back exam papers and reading out teh correct answers.
3. Next is explaining why they answers are correct or incorrect.  This is Knowledge of correct results and explanation.  Again if we look at the analogy of handing back examination papers this is:

• here is your exam
• here are the correct answers
• here is why they are correct

4. At a stronger level is KCR+e (the last point) plus specific actions to reduce the gap between your exam answers and the correct answers. With the exam analogy it would be  “revise the following topics, areas concepts with particular attention to……”

5. The final stage is as above with an activity to reinforce learning or correct inaccuracies.

However…..

While I like this model and I can see the benefits of it, and they are clear. The application maybe a different issue. I suspect that for the majority of teachers, the biggest constrain they will face is not willingness rather it is TIME.

I believe if we are going to implement (and we should) timely and effective, personalised and relevant feedback we must also address the pressing issues of time and its compounding factors of class size and curriculum. If you have a class of 25 students how much time do you have to provide timely and effective feedback. If you look at the average class being 50 minutes long, the time available to provide timely feedback is limited. here are some possible classrooms activities and timings with out feedback.

Classroom Activities

• Students arrive in class, and set up  – 5 minutes
• Teacher introduces class focus and details objectives/outcomes – 5 minutes
• Administration (roll/roster etc) – 5 minutes
• Starts lessons, scaffolds topic/content etc 15 minutes
• Summaries and concludes, reflects on task, packs up 5 minutes

If the teacher is providing 1:1 feedback they have 15 minutes to talk to each student. That’s 30 seconds per student.

We have to consider what we are doing in the classroom. I do not believe that we can ignore providing feedback, its is one of the most effective tools we have in our teaching toolbox. So what can we look at changing to facilitate and enable this tool? What about…

• reducing curriculum content
• decreasing class size
• increasing class time (this is stealing from Peter to pay for Paul)

These would help but are going to be limited by financial considerations

Reading:

http://www.slideshare.net/harvey_mellar/dylan-wiliam-1374277

(this is not the presentation we saw but is almost identical)

The idea is that you take your activity and break it down into the component elements and match these against the different taxonomic levels and the learning actions.

For example if you looked at students constructing a wiki

• Editing the wiki is applying
• Searching for the information  – remembering
• Tagging the pages with suitable and detailed keywords and notes is understanding
• Validating the information is evaluating
• Uploading the resources to the wiki is applying
• Collaborating and networking is a higher order skill

and so on

Here is the PDF version of this tool – blooms-activity-analysis

This is a first draft and I would appreciate comments and suggestions.

Higher order thinking skills like analysis, evaluation and creativity incorperate lower order thinking skills like remembering, understanding and applying. We aim to teach and facilitate higher order thinking skills in our teaching, knowing that these higher order skills will scaffold better learning and ownership of concepts and processes. But what do we examine when we set our students tests or examination?

If we look at our tests and examinations are they focused toward Higher Order or Lower Order Thinking skills? Are the assessment tasks and questions open or closed?

We are required to assess our students to:

• measure their progress,
• to track their learning,
• to identify weakness
• to measure our own performance as educators.

Parents need a measure of their childrens progress, politicians and administrators need to measure how their money is being spent. Assessment, often in the form of tests and examinations, is used for all of this. This is not wrong but Assessment should primarily be for learning (Well done AFL)

This raises some fundemental questions about our assessment systems

• Do our assessment systems do our students justice?
• Do the assessment systems reflect our students learning?
• Do they reflect the higher order thinking skills that we should be teaching our students in the 21st Century?
• Is a 3 hour test a fair reflection on a years or semesters work?
• Does a test or examination adequately prepare our students for work? How many workplaces have examinations as a measure of performance?

Does a one, two or three hour examination, sat in isolation from information sources and reference give a student adequate time to develop analysis, evaluate and be creative? To reflect critically on a year or mores work? Is it realistic to expect a student to complete these in close book format, when in the “real world” they would have a plethera of resources at their finger tips?

We know that in the knowledge economy of the 21st Century, Higher order thinking skills are valued and are indeed essential. But, do our assessments reflect higher or lower order thinking?

Key verbs in Bloom’s and 3 story Intellect

If we look at Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy or perhaps its simplified cousin the Art Costa’s Three Story Intellect, many of the verbs we associate with examination and test questions reflect lower order thinking skills.

Common key verbs in examinations

What are the key verbs we use in our examinations. I examine several examinations recently and these were the key verbs.

• list (Remembering)
• state (Remembering)
• identify (Remembering)
• name (Remembering)
• describe (Remembering)
• comment (Understanding)
• discuss (Understanding)
• explain (Understanding)
• exemplify (Understanding)
• compare (Analyse)
• analyse (Analyse)
• evaluate (Evaluate)

These are predominently lower order thinking skills. Examinations can be a poor tool to measure higher order thinking.

Fortunately, examinations are not the only form of assessment we use with our students, but do the other types of assessment actually reflect Higher Order Thinking. Do the assessment tasks reflect the higher order goals and objectives or are they more of the same.

Do we put suitable emphasis on:

• developing a hypothesis (Evaluating)
• experimenting (Evaluating)
• planning (Creating)
• designing (Creating)
• judging and evaluating (Evaluating)
• producing and making (Creating)
• critiquing, reviewing and testing (Evaluating)
• refining (Creating)
• mixing and remixing (Creating)

These can not be easily tested adequately in an examination or test